Saturday, June 22, 2013

This happened this evening, starting with a Martha Stewart recipe and adjusting for ingredients on hand. Since Rebecca approved, I'm making sure I can do it again.

Ingredients
One pound of skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
A cup of white rice

Eight ounces of mushrooms, sliced

Half an onion, diced
Three tablespoons butter, divided into one tbsp and two to use at different moments
One tablespoon olive oil
A tablespoon of dried thyme
A teaspoon of "Better than Bouillon"
Three cups water ready to be heated in your nice countertop kettle

Steps
Turn on the kettle.

Check all your ingredients and do any final chopping.

Put the rice into a pot and use the same cup to measure two cups of water when it boils. Put pan on the stove over low heat, cover it, and set timer to 20 minutes.

Heat the olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a skillet or dutch oven. Check that it's ready for the meat by dropping a tiny piece in and being sure it sizzles.

Add half the meat, turning it once a minute until it's a pale brown all over and a nicer looking brown in spots. Remove that meat to a plate. Repeat with the second half of the meat, including removal.

Add the other two tablespoons of butter and push them around until mostly melted. Add the onions and stir for half a minute. Add the mushrooms, spread them around pretty evenly, and then stir roughly once a minute for about five minutes.

While the mushrooms brown, put another half cup of hot water in the measuring cup and add the "Better than Bouillon" and the thyme to it. Stir well.

Add the liquid to the mushrooms and onions, stirring well and gently scraping the pan bottom to get the beautiful brown flavor-filled stuff down there to merge into the liquid. Cook that on medium for two minutes.

Add back the chicken, stir everything together, turn the heat to very low and give it about ten minutes to all merge nicely into shared flavor and matching heat. Check once to be sure the liquid isn't disappearing, but you don't need much of it since you'll use it mainly to flavor the rice.

Put rice in bowls, add a share of the chicken and other ingredients and enjoy.

(First time through, I actually started with the world's simplest salad: a pile of spinach, a quick drizzle of olive oil, and a quick little bit of ground salt. I ate that while the chicken finished, then put the rice and chicken in the same bowl.)(Martha Stewart used fresh thyme, didn't use the onions, and replaced half the bouillon and water with white wine. I suspect that would be at least as good.)